“They didn’t quite always relate to the other movies, and so on,” said Millar exclusively to SciFiNow, “whereas Marvel have built a very interesting creative universe.

“I think it’s a really smart move – I would say that of course – because I love the idea of all the Marvel characters spread across a bunch of different studios in a giant, cohesive Marvel universe – feeling like it exists out there. When I was a kid picking up comics the editorial group used to run their own little fief, the X-Men books were all under one editor, the Spider-Man books under another, The Avengers books under another editor, and that’s kinda what this feels like too. The financial burden to have all these things at one company would just be too great – you’d never get a Guardians Of The Galaxy if Marvel could put out a Fantastic Four movie, you know?”

It’s a good point, if Marvel Studios still had their best known cosmic super-team on the books they probably wouldn’t need the bigger risk of porting the relatively unknown Guardians Of The Galaxy into cinemas. As it stands though, we get two hotly tipped outsiders with a background in subversive superhero deconstruction – Chronicle‘s Josh Trank and Super‘s James Gunn – playing around with some of Marvel Comics’ most creatively rich intellectual properties.

“I love the fact, just as a fan, that these kind of movies can come out too – it can be a lot more experimental,” concludes Millar. “I like the fact that Fox that do a Fantastic Four so Marvel can get a Ant-Man movie out there. A lot of people say ‘I want it all back at Marvel’, but there’d be half as many movies out there, unfortunately.”

Fantastic Four is due in cinemas 6 March 2015. Buy Fantastic Four director Josh Trank’s Chronicle now on DVD for £9.36 and Blu-ray for £11.99 from Amazon.co.uk.